Protest in San Francisco over black man killed by police -reports

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Hundreds of protesters
rallied in San Francisco on Thursday night in response to the
videotaped police killing of a black man who authorities said
was a suspect in a stabbing before being shot dead by several
officers, local media said.

Mario Woods, 26, was shot on Wednesday afternoon amid
heightened scrutiny of police violence following high-profile
killings of unarmed black people across the United States since
mid-2014 and a renewed civil rights movement under the name
Black Lives Matter.

Demonstrators, including Woods' mother, gathered in the
city's Bayview neighborhood on Thursday night chanting phrases
like "No justice, no peace. No racist police," the San Francisco
Chronicle and other local media reported on Friday.

San Francisco police said officers encountered Woods while
investigating reports that someone matching his description had
stabbed someone in the shoulder.

Police said they first tried using pepper spray and fired
bean bag rounds at Woods, who they said was holding a knife and
refused commands to drop it, then shot him dead when he moved
toward an officer.

Video of the shooting, apparently recorded on bystanders'
cell phones and uploaded to social media, showed one of about a
dozen officers move directly in front of Woods as he attempted
to walk away. Woods was then dropped by a hail of gunfire.

In several seconds of footage recorded from two vantage
points, the phalanx of officers can be seen with their weapons
pointed at Woods, whose back is to the wall of a building. It is
not clear from the video if Woods was armed when he was shot.

Police said the suspect was a danger to others and that "the
officers could not allow him room to harm anyone else."

Critics, including San Francisco Public Defender Jeff
Adachi, have suggested the shooting may have been unnecessary.

"Based on what we see in this video, it does not look like
the officers who fired the fatal shots were in immediate danger
of being killed and that there were other alternatives that
could have been taken," Adachi told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Thursday night's demonstration had largely dispersed by
about 9 p.m. local time, according to the reports, and there was
no word of arrests of clashes with police.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by
Danniel Wallis and Richard Chang)